CHAPTER II I THE ALCOTT BOY ONCE upon a time in the little town of Wolcott, Connecticut, was born a boy destined to offer to the world new and beautiful thoughts. He was laughed at and misunderstood; but the thoughts were truth, and they have lived, although the boy grew weary and old and passed on. The boy was Amos Bronson Alcott. He was a country lad, used from infancy to the rugged life of the farm, with its self-denial and makeshifts. The seeming disadvantage, however, proved quite the opposite. His close communion with Nature brought him nearer to the truths of life. For him God ceased to be a mythical object to be studied and read about on Sunday; but, as he roamed the fields and climbed the hills, the lad found Him in the rocks and the woodlands, and in the sparkling streams. He became a reality. The boy and God were friends. Of schooling he had little. When work at the farm permitted, he attended the country school near his father's house. "Our copies," he told his little daughters, "were set by the schoolmaster in books made of a few sheets of foolscap, stitched together and ruled with a leather plummet. We used ink made of maple and oak bark, which we manufactured ourselves. With this I began keeping a diary of my doings." This was when the boy was twelve. His hours at school were few, but as he went about his daily tasks on the farm, his thoughts grew and grew until his mental stature far exceeded his physical. He read as he guided the plow along the furrow, sometimes unmindful of his work until a sudden punch from a neglected handle, as the plow struck a stone, would bring him back to earth with a thump. He sowed seeds in the moist, sweet earth, but his face was turned to the skies, and he knew the clouds and the stars. When he gathered firewood, his eyes were keen for the soft, dainty mosses, the clinging lichens. As he picked berries for the home table, he never missed the whirr of a bird wing or passed unnoticed the modest flowers half hidden in the soil. Nature was his library, and she spread out her choicest treasures to this growing boy.